BE^2R PROJECT SEMINAR SERIES

On May 17th at 4:00 PM, the first of three Training Days scheduled by the BE^2R project – "from field to mug" will take place. The project BE^2R is funded under the PSR Puglia 2014-2020 - SM 16.2 "Support for pilot projects and the development of new products, practices, processes, and technologies," for an amount of €392,419.28.

The technical seminar, which will be held online on the Zoom platform (registration link here), will be titled "Craft Beers Made in Puglia: from enhancing local raw materials to reusing brewery by-products for food purposes. An example of circular economy" and will be conducted by Professor Antonietta Baiano - Technical Scientific Manager of the project, from the Department of Agricultural, Food, Natural Resource Sciences, and Engineering (DAFNE) at the University of Foggia.

The Training Day has also been accredited by the Board of Agronomists, so participants will be awarded Continuing Education Credits (CEUs).The project aims to promote the development of Puglia's agricultural beer production by seizing the growth opportunities available in this market. The work being carried out involves creating a protocol for agricultural beer production with a strong territorial identity, using traditional Apulian cereals and, for example, hops produced by local hop growers and self-produced yeasts on the farm, with processes suitable for niche productions of high quality.

Puglia boasts over 40 craft breweries and approximately 25 beer firms, ranking among the most flourishing regions in Italy for brewing production. Regional breweries draw inspiration from internationally recognized styles but reinterpret them in a personalized manner by increasingly well-prepared master brewers from a technical-scientific point of view, who therefore feel limited by the need to resort to raw materials destined for mass production or, alternatively, niche raw materials generally available only from foreign suppliers.

In this perspective, several producers have inaugurated a new trend, represented by providing their craft beers with a territorial imprint through the addition of minor ingredients (in terms of quantity), such as, for example, oranges from Gargano or aromatic herbs typically used in regional gastronomy. In this trend, the members of the G.O. believe that the quality leap capable of consecrating Apulian production could be represented by the creation of beers whose characteristics are linked to the geographical environment and its intrinsic natural and human factors, as raw materials are predominantly obtained in particular areas of the region.

This implies that, in addition to water, which is indeed the predominant ingredient that strongly characterizes the sensory quality of beer, it is appropriate to resort to other ingredients that can be: typical of the territory (as is the case with cereals traditionally grown locally); not native to the territory but obtained by adapting cultivation to the specific pedoclimatic environment (in the case of hops); generally purchased in standardized form but that can be self-produced on the farm (like yeasts).

The partnership of the BE^2R project is working systematically on all levels of the production chain: from the recovery of ancient varieties of cereals, to the development of protocols for malt and agricultural beer production, up to the recovery of by-products. The production protocols will be developed by the research institutes involved, both with reference to field activities and concerning transformation processes. Adaptation and testing will be carried out by the involved agricultural companies and the agricultural brewery, and consequently, the developed protocols will be immediately operational in companies that wish to adopt them.

Specifically, the innovative elements will be represented by:

• Cereal production protocols for ancient grains in two areas of Puglia;
• Hop production protocols in a Puglian area;
• Self-production and maintenance protocols for yeasts suitable for brewing;
• Brewing process protocols;
• Recovery of spent grains for the production of functional bakery products.

The know-how developed by the project will allow stakeholders interested in agricultural beer production to access an interesting market competitively with a product characterized by a strong territorial identity.

The project partners constitute an Operational Group of the PEI AGRI, a cooperation model based on the "interactive innovation model" that involves collaboration among various actors to make the best use of different complementary types of knowledge, whose main objective is the co-creation and dissemination of solutions/opportunities ready to be implemented in practice.

The BE^2R Operational Group consists of important representatives: from the Brewing sector (Birra Salento Società semplice agricola, as the lead partner; Officine Birrai; Soc. Coop. Agricola Valle Verde; Solimando Giuseppe; Birra Salento Srl); from the Research world (University of Foggia, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics: National Research Council); consulting firms that have been promoting and evaluating innovations in the agri-food sector for years (Aretè Srl, Cassandro Srl); from Dare Puglia (Agri-Food Technological District) and CIA Puglia.